After This Ceremony, The Bridegroom Was Obliged To Retire To The House
Of His Nearest Relation, Where He Continued Three Days And Nights,
Feasting, And Receiving Presents From All His Male Friends, While The
Bride Was Paid The Same Compliments By Her Female Acquaintance.
At
the expiration of the appointed time, the gentleman returned to his
own house.
The Moors are not allowed by their law more than four wives, but they
may have as many concubines as they can maintain; accordingly, the
wealthy Moors, besides their wives, keep a kind of seraglio of women
of all colours.
From their marriages, I am insensibly led to the subject of the burial
of their dead. Not that any idea strikes me of an analogy between the
situations of a married person, and one consigned to the "_narrow
house_," as Ossian poetically styles the grave; but from a certain
succession of thought, for which one is at a loss to account. In the
burial of their dead, they are decent and pious, without pomp or
show. The corpse is attended by the relations and friends, chanting
passages from the Koran, to the mosque, where it is washed, and it is
afterwards interred in a place at some distance from the town, the
Iman, or priest, pronouncing an oration, containing the eulogy of the
deceased. The male relations express their regard by alms and prayers,
the women by ornamenting the tomb with flowers and green leaves. Their
term of mourning is the same as ours, twelve months, during which
period the widows divest themselves of every ornament, and appear
habited in the coarsest attire.
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